Page 98 of Evil Bones
Again, he offered to call an Uber.
Again, I said I’d pick him up at the airport.
When I was finally in bed and had turned off the light and silenced my phone, the ol’ gray cells dived straight into dissecting the evening’s dinner conversations.
Meloy had asked endless questions about forensic anthropology. My educational pathway. My position with the MCME. My role at a crime scene.
Standard queries for those interested in the processing of death. Tedious, but nothing surprising.
Having seen a brief online article in theObserverabout a body found at the McDowell Nature Preserve—note to self to determinehow that little gem had come to be—he asked if I was involved in the case. I admitted that I was and outlined the basics.
Talk rambled on through various topics. The pros and cons of Ozempic and other GLP-1 receptor drugs. A horrific accident at the Charlotte Motor Speedway. The potential benefits and threats of AI.
My last conscious thought before drifting off:
Meloy hadn’t posed a single follow-up about the McDowell case—what I now knew to be the Brown case.
Mildly surprising.
Birdie nudged me to consciousness from a jumbled dream about flowers and chipmunks. Or maybe they were Mama’s squirrels.
Forcing my eyes open, I squinted at the bedside clock. The digits indicated it was just past six.
I drew Birdie close and stroked his head, hoping for a few more hours of shut-eye. Unaware that the day would spiral from disappointing to depressing to truly horrendous.
Cuddles were not what the cat had in mind. Wriggling free, he positioned himself to chew on my hair.
“Fine,” I said, throwing back the covers. “But we’re not going to make this breakfast at dawn thing a habit.”
Birdie looked at me with round, yellow eyes. Questioning my inappropriate reference to eating at sunrise?
I descended to the kitchen, planning to throw some kibble into a bowl, then hurry back up to bed.
My brain had other ideas.
Ideas that did not involve additional sleep.
I should have known they wouldn’t.
After tossing about for a good twenty minutes, I propped myself up and grabbed my mobile.
No voice mails.
Three texts.
The first was an ad from a spa about a skin care sale.
The next was a notice that my car was overdue for an oil change.
The final message was from Nguyen about fragmentary skeletal remains unearthed at a construction site in Fourth Ward. Nothing urgent. The bones were at the morgue, and she was fairly confident the deceased was an animal.
I’m a person who can’t rest if there’s a task to complete. I’ve always been that way. I was one of those kids who finished the science project or wrote the English essay well in advance of the due date. Annoying, granted, but that’s how I’m wired.
Even though it was the weekend, I decided to pop in at the lab. I could confirm that the newly arrived DOA was nonhuman. And I could plug away at Nguyen’s damn case inventory.
I know. Get a life.
The MCME was quiet in the way institutional buildings are when largely deserted. No gurneys rattling. No doors whooshing. No elevators bonging.
